


Whenever, Wherever

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: AU, M/M, Meet-Cute, canon homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 22:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5887486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt is alone. Bullied, sidelined, and often terrified, he is enduring high school until he doesn’t have to anymore. When his guidance counsellor suggests that he may be a perfect candidate for the PARY (Project for At Risk Youth) trial and gives him a handset device to access the network, he’s sceptical. When he’s contacted by another user from within Lima’s town limits, he’s scared, nervous, and excited in equal turns. Maybe, just maybe, he’s not as alone as he thought…</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whenever, Wherever

**Author's Note:**

> Written to fulfil the basic prompt/challenge of a story comprised of key/iconic 'klaine moments' from canon. I did the best I could!

i. _‘COURAGE’_

When Kurt Hummel was first assigned his PARY unit, he thought that it sounded terrible. He’d heard about the program - the Project for At Risk Youth - on the news, and had seen plastered all over the internet, along with varying arguments about its hypothetical usefulness and whether or not it was merely another federal means of surveying queer youth, outing vulnerable kids to unsuspecting parents and putting them in potentially harmful situations. Kurt had read some of the websites and news articles himself, and couldn’t find where it said specifically that it was for LGBT teens, or where they were obliged to tell their parents about it. It sold itself as a social networking tool for vulnerable youth, and that didn’t just mean gay. He still didn’t want participate, though. Kurt didn’t consider himself to be a joiner. Those clubs were, on the whole, not for him. 

And besides, who could there be in Lima? He didn’t think there was anyone in Allen County who would understand him, even. At 16, Kurt had resigned himself to the bullying and the loneliness, and hadn’t really argued when his dad had suggested pulling him from public school altogether when the locker checks and dumpster tosses escalated to almost daily events. How a stupid project was supposed to save his life, he couldn’t begin to fathom.

“It’s supposed to help foster a sense of community between marginalised and lonely teens,” his guidance counselor, Miss Pillsbury, stressed, her smile wide and her Bambi-eyes wider. She had the literature open in front of her as she read. “It’s supposed to encourage you to reach out to other people across the network, so that you can support one another in times of emotional stress and turmoil. You know, peer support can be very beneficial.” 

She pushed the device across the table toward him with one neat fingernail, and smiled at him again. Kurt didn’t smile. He just stared at the PARY device and then at her.

“Just try it, Kurt, please,” she said to him, squirting hand sanitiser into her palm and rubbing her hands together. Kurt thought, idly, that her hands looked more like they could use a good moisturiser than more cleaning, but it wasn’t his place to judge. He picked the device up, turning it over in his own hands. It looked like his phone, he considered. At least it wasn’t ugly, which felt novel for a government funded program. 

“Can I leave?” he said, and she smiled at him again and nodded, the red of her hair bouncing on her narrow shoulders. He sighed and picked up the strap of his bag, and slipped the device into the pocket as he pulled open the glass door of the office. 

 

It wasn’t that he deliberately ignored the device so much as he forgot about it in the bustle of trying to survive one more day at William McKinley High School. His friend Mercedes met him in the parking lot, the red of her jacket loud in the monotone grey of their surroundings, and looped her arm through his.

“What did Miss P want?” she asked, and Kurt shrugged a shoulder.

“To ask me to sign up for PARY,” he said, and pulled the device from the pocket of his bag to show her. 

“Cool,” she said, and then smiled her wide smile at him before handing it back. “It’d be nice to be less alone, y’know?” 

And maybe that, when the dust settled, was the statement that actually made him consider trying it. 

He left it on the passenger seat of his car as he drove home, and turned it over in his hands as he headed inside. His step-mother bustled in the kitchen, firmly rejecting his offer to help and chasing him out when he stole two cookies from the jar in the cupboard and a glass of milk from the fridge. 

“If you spoil your appetite,” she warned, pointing a wooden spoon at him, and he laughed freely, which sounded odd to his own ears.

“I’m a growing boy,” he protested, and she smiled. 

“Not for much longer if you decide to live on cookies,” she says. “But seriously. Do your homework. I’ve got the kitchen covered. You and Finn can do the dishes after.” 

Kurt nodded his head, and headed for the dining room instead. He lay the device on the table beside his books, and wondered what he was scared of. Nothing would happen. There would be no one there. 

What was there to lose, he reasoned. He turned it on.

*

Blaine Anderson, on the other hand, took his PARY unit home with him and sat on his bed with it in front of him. He’d survived another stilted and difficult dinner with his parents, finished his homework, and now the itch to investigate the potential of the project burned beneath his skin. 

Blaine wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but thought that it would probably behave in the same way as most social apps he’d had experience with did. What he was presented with instead was a map of the United States, lit up with small green dots. He found a space to type in his zip code, and the map changed to a radius of Lima. He was surprised to see a few dots around the edge of the screen, but the one that caught him most unaware was the small dot that lit up almost next to his own. He tapped on it automatically, sending a simple missive hurtling towards the unknown.

The light blinked off almost immediately, and Blaine tried not to be disappointed, sent messages to some of the other green dots on his screen and received replies from those. But the dot that existed in his town occupied the greater part of his concentration. He was still thinking about it when he turned off his own device and crawled beneath his sheets.

It wasn’t personal, he thought. It was terrifying, the idea of being able to privately contact other kids like him. He couldn’t know who was at the other end. But he had to hope that the devices were being distributed as responsibly in other schools as they were at Dalton. 

The other device existed, and he would look for it again. Next time, perhaps the dot would even respond.

*

The next time a message beeped on Kurt’s device, he didn’t log off immediately. Instead, he slipped quietly into the girls bathroom and pulled it from the pocket of his bag. When he finally managed to unlock it, his fingers shaking and his nerves tingling, the message he was confronted with was short and simple. 

‘Courage,’ it said. Each letter clear and precise. Kurt read it twice more, and then caught his lower lip between his teeth, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. The greeting was, perhaps, a little strange, but the good thing about the system was that one thing was absolutely certain. It came from somebody who understood how it felt to be alone.

And their dot was within driving distance at that very moment.

‘A toi aussi,’ he typed back, and pressed the device to his chest before sliding it carefully back into his bag.

 

ii. _‘you’re the single most interesting kid in all of ohio’_

Getting to know Kurt took time. He was cagey, and prone to bouts of silence, but he did log on reliably. Every night at 7pm, Blaine would see a small green dot appear near his own, and he would tap on it to send a message. Their initial conversations were short, filled with mundane details. He discovered that Kurt was a junior, although he was born in ‘93. Blaine told him that he was a sophomore, but that he’d been held back a year as well. 

“My mom passed,” Kurt said, and Blaine wasn’t sure how to respond. “When I was 8.” 

He was quiet for a long time, not even the dots to imply he was typing visible on the screen. Blaine toyed with replying, and then Kurt’s dots appeared again.

“Sorry. Conversation killer,” he typed. “It was a long time ago.”

“I was attacked,” Blaine responded. “That’s why I repeated. I was hospitalised, and I missed a lot of school whilst my parents found a new one for me. I repeated a year to catch up again.”

He breathed out heavily through his nose, tried to calm the trembling in his hands and suppress the jackhammer of his pulse with some of the breathing techniques his therapist after the assault had taught him. It worked, a little. When he managed to refocus on the screen, Kurt had responded again.

“Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “I know that can’t be easy.” 

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Blaine replied, and then, quickly, “I have to go. Sorry.” 

For once in their brief acquaintance, it was Blaine who logged off without warning.

 

Usually, though, their conversations were much lighter. Blaine learned to appreciate the sardonic nature of Kurt’s sense of humour, and how to make it seem like Kurt’s typed emoticons might be genuine. Kurt started to initiate conversations with him, sometimes opening in what felt like the middle of discussions. Blaine learned to roll with it, just responding to him as he would if they were both lying on his bed side by side, the way he did with his friends at Dalton sometimes.

“Am I boring?” Kurt asked one evening. Blaine stopped typing and stared at the device lying on the bed in front of him, and at the small dots indicating that Kurt was still trying to say something. He slowly deleted his own message, the last letter vanishing just as a new message from Kurt popped up. “Sometimes I feel like I’m wearing all of my personality on the outside, so I don’t have to have one on the inside.” 

Blaine bit his lip and frowned. He didn’t know what Kurt looked like, or if he’d ever accidentally run into him at the Lima Bean, if he was one of the many public school boys who’d asked him to pass the sugar as he stirred cinnamon into his coffee. He didn’t know if he’d seen him at the public library, perhaps, or any of the other myriad spaces that they must inhabit at the same time, but he knew one thing with absolute clarity: it was looking forward to talking with Kurt that got him through some days. 

“Are you kidding?” he typed back. “You’re the single most interesting kid in all of Ohio.” 

He stared at the words on the screen, and wondered if perhaps they were too much, too cheesy or too overwrought. They felt honest, but maybe they’d seem trite to Kurt. The longer his own screen remained quiet, the more he thought perhaps he’s pushed too far. Then the dots appeared.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Kurt replied, and Blaine’s smile spread across his face, crinkling his eyes and warming everything from his toes to his ears.

 

On a different evening, Blaine said, “I think I have a crush on this guy.” 

“You think you do?” Kurt asked, and Blaine frowned and sighed.

“No, I know I do. His name is Jeremiah, and he works at the GAP, and I totally haven’t asked you if this is okay for you. You don’t have to. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Kurt typed, following it quickly with, “Sometimes I think I have a sign above my head, just constantly going ‘gaydiddy gay gay gay.’ I mean, I guess my point is that I don’t mind you telling me you’re gay. Are you gay?”

Blaine chewed his lip for a minute and responded slowly, each word carefully chosen. “Yes. I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise. I came out when I was 13. It was - eventful.”

“Coming out?”

“More like being out?”

Kurt was quiet this time, and Blaine worried at his lip a little more. More of his friends logged on and sent him messages, but he waited for Kurt’s reply first. Eventually, it came. 

“Your repeated year?” he typed, and Blaine typed an affirmative back. The silence felt heavy to Blaine, and he was beginning to wonder whether maybe he should say goodnight to Kurt, log off and play games on his phone for a while, when Kurt’s answer beeped at him.

“Tell me about Jeremiah,” he said, and Blaine felt a breath huff out of him that he hadn’t realised his was holding. 

He sent Kurt a run of messages detailing how cute Jeremiah was, and how he was always super friendly, and how beautiful his smile was, finishing with, “If he and I got married, the GAP would give me a 50% discount.” 

“Don’t you think you might be counting a few chickens, Blaine?” Kurt asked, and the blush the coloured his cheeks was worth it for the notion that Kurt was laughing with him. 

Somehow, making Kurt laugh already felt important.

 

And then there were the conversations that felt personal but important. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Blaine asked. His parents were out, and he’d taken the opportunity to stay downstairs with the PARY unit instead of taking it to his bedroom to talk to Kurt. Stretched out on the couch, his socked toes wiggling against the opposite arm of the small two seater he’d taken up residence in, he felt comfortable and bold, forthright in his need to know more details about Kurt’s life.

“Me?” Kurt said. “That’s funny.” 

“Why? You’re funny, you’re nice. Surely there’s someone?”

“I’ve got all the sex appeal of a baby penguin, a layer of baby fat that won’t move, and people still mistake me for my mom on the phone. No one is beating down my door, Blaine.” 

Blaine stopped wiggling his toes, pressed them into the upholstery instead, and chewed his lip. “I’ve never been anyone’s boyfriend,” he confessed, and waited. 

And waited.

Kurt said, “What happened with Jeremiah?”

“I built an entire elaborate fantasy in my head based on two coffee dates, and then I accidentally got him fired by serenading him at work,” Blaine typed. “A dozen mortified shoppers will attest, I am not very good at romance.” 

“I dated a cheerleader once,” Kurt typed. “I was trying to be the son I thought my dad would be more proud of. I’d just set him up with the mom of this boy I really liked - like, I don’t know - and he was so invested in Finn? I wanted that attention again. I wore flannel, Blaine. Flannel. For a week” 

Blaine laughed, pressed his hand to his mouth and dug his toes deeper into the couch. “What happened with your dad?” 

“I told him, eventually. He told me he knew. We’re okay now. What about you? You don’t talk about your parents.” 

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Blaine responded. “My dad responded to me coming out by buying a beat up old Chevy and insisting we rebuild it in our driveway over the summer.”

“Blaine, I’m sorry.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Blaine said, realising as he said it that it was true. “My mom is okay, but it’s been weird.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Blaine staring at the screen of his unit, wondering what Kurt was doing wherever he was right now. Then it occurred to him. They’d been talking to one another for weeks, had shared a lot of truths and uncertainties, and they lived within twenty miles of one another. Probably within 10.

“Kurt,” Blaine typed. “Would you like to meet me for coffee at the weekend?”

 

iii. _‘you know my coffee order?’_

It felt to Kurt as if months had passed since Blaine had invited him for coffee at the Lima Bean. In reality, it had been less than 72 hours since the invitation was extended, and Kurt was now stood just inside the door, jittery and uncertain, his hand clenched around the strap of his bag and the pale cable of his scarf wound around his neck. They’d agreed on The Lima Bean because it was public and, on a Saturday afternoon, was certain to be bustling. Kurt was nervous, but he liked Blaine a lot, felt that they shared a lot of similar experiences, that it was worth the risk to meet him face to face. 

Despite that, though, and the fact that he was reasonably certain - given that they’d met on the PARY network - that Blaine wasn’t lying to him about his age, both Mercedes and Rachel Berry (small, loud, obnoxious, but with her heart largely in the right place) had come with him. Once inside, they’d ordered their own drinks (Rachel very eloquent in her insistence that hers must be a _soy_ latte, because she’s _vegan_ ) and found a table with a view of the door. When he glanced back at them, Mercedes offered her widest smile and put her thumbs up, and he took a steadying breath, pulling his phone from his pocket to give his hands something to do.

Whilst he didn’t know what Blaine looked like specifically, he thought - hoped - that he would recognise him when he saw him. He glanced up when the bell above the door jingled a few minutes before their appointed meeting time, and was confronted by a boy roughly his own age, his dark hair gelled and parted neatly, his nose pink from the chill and his dark blue peacoat buttoned against the cold outside. His scarf looked warm, and the mustard yellow of his jeans added a splash of colour to the dismal grey of winter. Kurt wasn’t sure, but he hoped that this was Blaine. When the boy reached into his pocket and withdrew a PARY unit, Kurt let his breath out slowly and stepped forward, hopeful and tentative at once, and bolder than he’d ever felt.

“Blaine?” he asked, and the boy glanced up. Kurt watched the smile that spread across his face, wide and easy and warm. His eyes squinted when he smiled, he noticed, and turned the corners of his own mouth up in return.

“You came!” he said, and Kurt nodded dumbly. Blaine was beautiful and real, and Kurt felt all of his words slinking out of his toes into the floor. “Can I buy you a coffee?” he asked, and Kurt nodded, swallowing thickly.

“Grande non-fat mocha,” he answered, his already high voice breathy on the exhalation. Blaine’s smile didn’t waver. He only pulled his wallet from the pocket not occupied by his phone and the PARY unit and took a step towards the line for the counter.

They split a cookie and spent an hour together. Kurt watched Rachel and Mercedes leave, and tried to stop himself from staring mutely at the boy sitting across from him. 

Beneath the table, though, and out of Blaine’s sight, he couldn’t stop his foot from twirling.

 

Kurt arrived to their second coffee date seven minutes late, flustered and apologetic. “It’s inventory at my dad’s shop,” he explained, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it carefully on the back of his chair. “One of his employees is out sick, so I’ve been sweating in coveralls all morning, and when Dad said it was almost twelve thirty, I just about died. I barely had time to do my hair!” 

When he sat, he noticed that Blaine had already bought him his coffee and was gazing at him with his chin in his hand, his elbow propped on the table. “You have coveralls?” Blaine said, and Kurt struck a demure pose, his hands in his lap and his shoulders drawn up coquettishly.

“My dad owns an autoshop, Blaine,” he said. “You think I’ve never had my head under the hood of a car?”

Blaine shook his head gently, smile placid. “No, I just never pictured you for a coveralls kind of guy.”

“Well, I may have bedazzled them a little,” Kurt grinned, and took a sip of the coffee sitting on the table in front of him, licked the foam from his lips. “You know my coffee order?”

“Of course I do,” Blaine said, and then pushed half a biscotti towards him as well. “Tell me about the rest of your week.”

 

It was the following March that their relationship changed, neither ready to go home, the weather still too cold to stay outside. Blaine’s old Volvo was declared too drafty, so they were sitting in insulated warmth of Kurt’s Navigator, trading school stories and celebrity crushes and their favourite Vogue cover (Marion Cotillard). Blaine told Kurt he’d been following the Buckeyes this year, and Kurt pulled a face, told him he’d been the kicker for the McKinley Titans once, but that really, he preferred scarves. Blaine tilted his head and stared at him for a long moment that made Kurt’s skin flush an embarrassed pink.

“There you are,” Blaine said softly, and Kurt frowned briefly. 

“I’ve been looking for you forever,” Blaine continued, and leaned in to press a soft kiss to Kurt’s lips. It seemed to Kurt to be only natural to kiss him back.

When Blaine pulled away, he ducked his head, his own cheeks flushing. “You move me,” he told the car seat, fiddling with an imagined loose thread on his jeans, and only looked up when Kurt reached to squeeze his hand. Kurt smiled at him, and Blaine’s lips turned up easily. “We should practice,” he breathed, and Kurt leaned in toward him.

“I thought we were.” 

 

iv. _‘but i get to be meg ryan’_

Kurt invited Blaine to Breadstix, which Blaine accepted. He picked him up from his house, where Blaine was waiting at the end of his drive when he arrived. He slipped into the passenger seat and clicked his seatbelt in place, and then stared at Kurt’s profile in silence.

“What’s the occasion?” he asked, as Kurt pulled away, the sky still bright and the weather warming as April gave way to May. Kurt didn’t answer, and Blaine allowed the silence to linger comfortably between them. The radio played softly, and Blaine recognised the song as ‘Perfect’, which they’d sung together more than once. He hummed along, and caught the upturn of Kurt’s mouth as the lyrics progressed.

“I like your jeans and your hair,” he said quietly, once the song finished, and Blaine laughed, free and easy.

“You should see it before I gel it,” he replied, and Kurt glanced at him again.

“I’d like that,” he said, and Blaine felt the click of his teeth as his mouth slammed closed. Maybe someday, he thought, that might be a thing. Maybe Kurt might be his person - 

He was surprised by his beautiful, incredible boyfriend once more over dinner though. Kurt reached across the table for his hand and gripped it tightly with his own, stared into Blaine’s eyes with such intensity that Blaine would swear he’d seen the swirl of galaxies in the shining blue depths of his own.

“Would you be my date to junior prom?” he asked, and Blaine felt the bottom fall out of his world.

“Oh,” he said, turning his hand over to curl his fingers through Kurt’s. He stared at their hands for a moment. “Um,” he said, and then, quietly, “Prom?” 

Kurt nodded. “It’ll be the social event of the season,” he said, watching Blaine carefully. “You don’t - you don’t _want_ to go to prom with me?”

“No, no, no, of course I want to go with you. Just - prom.”

“What about prom, Blaine?”

“Remember I told you why I repeated a year? There was - there was this Sadie Hawkins dance. At my old school. I had just come out. So I asked a friend of mine, the only other gay guy in school, to go with me. While we were waiting for his dad to pick us up, these three guys um, beat the living crap out of us.”

Kurt squeezed his hand, his face drawn. “Blaine, I am so sorry.” 

“It’s fine. I’m out and I’m proud, it’s just - a bit of a sore spot.” 

Kurt sat silently for a minute, holding Blaine’s hand loosely, Blaine’s thumb stroking over his knuckle. Then he looked up and smiled. “It’s perfect, though. Do you see? You couldn’t face up to the bullies at your school, so you can do it at mine.” 

Blaine flicked a smile on that felt a little wonky, and Kurt’s wide smile slipped as well. 

“If it makes you uncomfortable, Blaine, we can skip prom and go to a movie instead,” he said softly, and Blaine shook his head.

“I’m crazy about you,” he breathed. Kurt bounced a little in his seat.

“Is that a yes?” 

“It’s a yes.”

 

Blaine picked him up promptly at the appointed time. He wore a beautiful tuxedo with a carnation boutonniere, and he presented Kurt with a matching one. He pinned it carefully to Kurt’s chest, and stole a kiss before pulling away. 

“You look amazing,” Blaine said, stepping back to admire Kurt’s kilt. Kurt twirled once, and Blaine caught his hand. “We’ll be late,” he said, and Kurt allowed himself to lead down the path and into Blaine’s waiting car.

In the hours that followed, both of them largely ignored, neither of them quite prepared to draw attention to themselves by dancing with one another the way the other couples did to the slow songs, cheek to cheek and chest to chest, Blaine let himself believe that they’d got away with it. They’d made it through an entire public school dance unharassed. 

And then they drew the name of the year’s Prom Queen.

In the silence that followed, Kurt’s breathing sounded like the loudest thing in the room, followed by the heavy fall of his feet as he ran. Blaine looked around the room, at the smiling faces, at the silent laughter, and he ran after Kurt, found him pacing in the corridor. He slowed to a walk, approached cautiously.

“Do you want to go? We don’t have to go back in there.” 

“Wasn’t this prom supposed to be about redemption? About taking away that lump you had in your throat from running away. If we leave, all it’s going to do is give me a lump, too.” 

Blaine looked at him, at this brave, wonderful boy he was lucky enough to know. “So what do you want to do?” 

Kurt raised his chin. “I’m gonna go back in there and get coronated,” he said. “I’m going to show them that it doesn’t matter if they’re yelling at me or whispering behind my back. They can’t touch me.” He reached for Blaine’s hand, squeezed it tight. “They can’t touch us, or what we have.”

Blaine caught his lower lip between his teeth, poured all of the love in his heart into the touch of his fingers between Kurt’s, and let Kurt lead them back into the gym.

When Dave Karofsky, Prom King, ran rather than dance with Kurt, Blaine stepped into the circle and held out his hand instead, the lump in his throat and in his chest unknotting slowly.

“Prejudice is just ignorance,” he whispered, beneath the volume of the music, and felt Kurt’s hand tighten on his arm in response.

 

They drove back across town in Blaine’s car. Blaine turned the radio off, and glanced at Kurt, twirling his Party Town tiara in his lap. 

“You could throw it,” he said, and Kurt smiled and huffed a laugh, shaking his head.

“I don’t want to feel ashamed of tonight,” he said, and looked at Blaine. Blaine pulled into his street, and then into his drive, stopping the car but not turning it off for a long moment. 

“I was proud to be with you,” Kurt whispered, and Blaine’s smile felt shaky even as it appeared, the lump in his throat tight and hard.

“Good,” he replied. “I want you to be.”

He turned the car off, slowly, and said, cautiously, “My parents are out. If you want to come in?” 

Kurt opened his door and stepped onto the the concrete of the driveway. 

In the silence of his bedroom, Blaine huffed affectionately at the amount of layers Kurt was wearing, and Kurt’s hands fumbled to help him with the small buttons of his shirt, and to push Blaine’s jacket from his shoulders to the floor. 

“I want you to be comfortable,” Blaine said softly, both of them down to their underwear, his hand trailing down Kurt’s ribs, resting on his hip. “So that I can be comfortable.”

Kurt’s eyes closed, and reopened with a fierce certainty. He caught Blaine’s face with his hand and kissed him with everything he had in him. 

“I love you,” Blaine said, and felt Kurt melt into the bed beneath him.

 

They were in line for their regular Saturday coffee date when Kurt said, apropos of nothing, “It’s like when Harry Met Sally.” Blaine glanced at him, and Kurt smiled back. “Of course, I get to be Meg Ryan.”

“Naturally,” Blaine agreed, and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. “Don’t they get married in the end?” 

Kurt shrugged a shoulder and grinned, and Blaine felt the laugh bubble inside of him.

It wouldn’t be so bad, perhaps. Forever with Kurt. That would be perfect, in fact.

 

v. _‘it looks weird if a person just has tan hands’_

Summer faded inexorably into winter, and the colour faded slowly from Blaine’s skin, changing from the rich gold of July and August to only the faintest tan by October. Kurt considered that he looked beautiful in his fitted coats and Dalton scarf, but he missed the richness of his skin. He looked, Kurt thought, a little sick.

Standing in the drugstore, staring at the rows of gradual tan moisturisers, Kurt was struck with an idea. The next time he saw Blaine, he would see if he could slip a little bronzer into his moisturiser. He looked good with a little colour. 

With his mission accomplished whilst Blaine was downstairs making a cheese plate for them to share whilst they binged on old episodes of Say Yes To The Dress together, he moved back to rest his back against Blaine’s pillows, toying with his phone and chatting with a few of the friends he’d managed to make on the PARY network as well. Blaine smiled at him when he plopped down next to him, and leant in for a kiss. 

“Ready?” he asked, and Kurt nodded easily. Blaine crawled onto the bed, and sat beside him, close enough that their thighs brushed whenever either of them shifted slightly. It was nice, he thought, chewing on a cracker, the lack of parental supervision at Blaine’s house. They could share a bed like this, and no one was coming up to check on them. There was no need for an open door policy here.

He woke up an hour later, with Blaine shaking his shoulder gently, to tell him that it was time for him to go, if he didn’t want to miss dinner and have his dad ban him from coming over on Saturdays forever.

“He wouldn’t,” Kurt said, sleepily, and Blaine smiled indulgently.

“If you insist. But it’s still almost 6 and I don’t think it’s worth the risk.” 

Kurt nodded and leaned in for another kiss, transfixed by the red of Blaine’s lips in the low light of his room. 

“I’ll see you before you go back to school?” he asked, and Blaine nodded. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Sleeping Beauty,” he said gently. He followed Kurt down the stairs, and kissed him once more before Kurt slipped out of the door and behind the wheel of the Navigator. Blaine was still standing in the doorway when Kurt drove away.

 

It was Wednesday afternoon when Kurt picked up the text from Blaine.

 **Blaine (16.02):** Did you put bronzer into my moisturiser?

Kurt smiled to himself. It must be working! He would expect thanks and gratitude, once he’d confirmed that it was him that had done it.

 **Kurt (16.58):** Yes, you look good with a little colour.

 **Blaine (16.58):** I only use moisturiser on my hands, Kurt. It looks weird if a person just has tan hands! 

Kurt stared at his phone, and then bit his lip as he tried not to laugh. 

**Kurt (17.00):** Is it *just* your hands that have a tan?

 **Blaine (17.00):** :O 

**Kurt (17.00):** I’ll buy you new moisturiser. I was trying to help, though.

True to his word, Kurt turned up at Blaine’s house the next Saturday with a new moisturiser, and a new hair gel. 

“It smells like raspberries,” he said, handing it over. “I thought that sounded fun?” 

When he looked at Blaine, he was smiling, but there were tears in his eyes as well.

“Why are you crying and laughing at the same time?” he asked, and Blaine stepped back to let him pass.

“Just - you,” he said, and closed the door behind him. “Just you.” 

 

For their first Valentine’s Day as a couple, Kurt concocted a plan to woo Blaine. His dad had agreed to take Carole out to a movie, and Finn was at Rachel’s. Kurt was going to make them food, and then they could spend the evening snuggled warm and full together on the loveseat, watching romantic comedies and reciting lines along with them, since it wasn’t practical for them to go out in Lima together, not yet. 

As part of his plan, he’d bought Blaine flowers - roses, yellow and red roses - and lit candles around the sitting room. He’d piled all of his corniest movies in front the TV, and put lasagne in the oven, and was in the process of wriggling into dove grey skinny jeans when the doorbell rang. Tucking his shirt in and buttoning his jeans, he dashed down the stairs to let Blaine in before he froze on the doorstep.

“Wow,” Blaine breathed out softly, unwinding his scarf and unbuttoning his coat to reveal one of Kurt’s favourite sweaters underneath it. 

“You like?” Kurt asked, nervous, glancing through the arch to the sitting room and the flickering glow of the flames. “It doesn’t need more candles?”

“Oh god no,” Blaine said, maybe too quickly. “No more candles.” 

Kurt huffed a laugh, and Blaine looked at him, raked his eyes up and down, and leaned in for a kiss. Kurt returned it quickly, but pulled back.

“I have something for you,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with his hands behind his back. Standing before Blaine, he brought the roses out from behind him, holding them out for Blaine to take.

“What are these for?” he asked, and Kurt shrugged.

“To celebrate you,” he replied, and, this time, let Blaine’s kiss linger on his lips and his tongue for longer. 

 

As Kurt’s senior year wore on, the inevitable conversation had to happen. He was applying to colleges in New York, and was hoping to be able to live with Rachel when they got there. It would keep their costs down - 

He stopped when he noticed how much Blaine wasn’t responding to him. “Are you okay?” he asked, and Blaine swallowed and forced a bright smile.

“Yes,” he said, “Fine.” 

“Please don’t lie to me, Blaine,” Kurt said, and Blaine shook his head.

“What happens to us?” Blaine asked, quiet and resigned. Kurt frowned at him.

“I thought you were planning on New York?” he said, and Blaine laughed, wet and heavy.

“That’s another year away, Kurt. You’ll have a whole life there that I won’t be part of. I don’t, we can’t-”

Kurt shook his head and gripped Blaine’s hands tight in his own. “It’s a year, Blaine. You can visit, I’ll come back here. We’ll be okay.”

He watched Blaine’s face closely, the distance in his eyes barely clearing. 

Blaine whispered, “Okay.” And then, “I love you so much. It’s going to be hard, living here without you.” 

“You won’t be here without me,” Kurt said. “We have our phones, we have Skype. I’ll speak to you all the time.”

To his own detriment, perhaps, he let himself believe that they would be okay. In the moment, though, he went back to focussing on his plans, buoyed by Blaine’s voice and his belief in what they had.

 

epilogue. ‘ _i am a work in progress’_

They marry one another when Blaine is 20 and Kurt is 21, in a barn in Indiana of all places. They don’t plan it, and it hasn’t been an easy journey. They have broken up, lived together and apart, and been through therapy and boyfriends and everything inbetween, and have come together again, stronger and more certain than ever before. They have made promises that they have broken in ways that they never suspected. Once upon a time, they had promised that they would never say goodbye to one another. Perhaps they had never said the words to one another specifically, but goodbyes had been said.

In a barn in Indiana, they whisper a lot of words to one another before they come together with two of their friends to exchange the promise of every day they have left. 

Kurt says, “I can’t stop you from failing, but I can promise to make it safe for you if you do.” 

Blaine, tears in his eyes and love in his heart, says, “I promise to bake you cookies at least twice a year.”

Kurt has laughter in his voice and in his eyes when he says, “Trust is a choice and I choose to trust and love you through everything.” 

They both make a quiet promise. To love one another, fearlessly and forever.

In front of their friends, and their assembled loved ones, and echoed by two other voices exchanging vows along with them, they say, “I am a work in progress.” 

And it’s true. They can’t guarantee who they will be tomorrow, or next year, but they can promise that. They will always be a work in progress, and they can make allowances for that. 


End file.
